Mosquito RS700 Restoration (3 Viewers)

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Great stuff Andy. That poor MCO wouldn't even have room to eat a bacon sandwich ...... must have been worse than lying on a 'stretcher' in the bomb bay.
 
Thanks guys. Wish I was as close to the Hurricane that we're also doing but that's at a facility 3 hours north of me.

Terry, jokes aside, it's quit possible there were more than a few bacon sandwiches consumed back there.
 
Work continues on our restoration though it slowed down over the holidays for obvious reasons. I'll pick up where I left off last October.

The canopy is being slowly stripped down to is fundamental parts for cleaning, painting and reassembly. During the course of disassembly, it was discovered that some of the framing is bent, probable as a result of an impact during handling some time in the past.

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The myriad hydraulic and pneumatic tubing is being removed after tagging them and documenting the locations and termination points. Mockups are being built at termination points to fasten the various fittings and valve headers so that we can both display these areas and keep track of the parts. Each tube in the below picture can be seen to have been tagged.

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My project was to build a mockup of the cockpit floor. The measurements taken since my last post in October were used to create a frame which you can see partially assembled at the Nanton shop below.

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Once the sides were installed, we began transferring some of the parts to the mockup. Here's a picture of yours truly sorting out the elevator control cables. If the seat were installed, the backrest/armour plate would be right in front of me with the seat being mounted to the vertical bulkhead that you see here. The unit mounted under my right elbow is the emergency hydraulic hand pump.

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Another angle showing the elevator control assembly. The control cables have now been unfurled and pulled through the bulkhead and the elevator trim wheel can clearly be seen. This whole assembly, when properly installed, will be fastened to the bulkhead and floor and fits under the pilot's seat.

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Last week, we decided that before going any further, we would paint the mockup so we did that yesterday. I took a cockpit part to the paint store and had the colour analyzed and they mixed up a batch of paint that we then applied to the mockup. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so will post some pics next time.
 
Terry, the mockups serve a couple of purposes. They are helping us to keep all our parts organized by providing a means to store all the bits and pieces once they are removed from the actual aircraft without having to disassemble them completely and throwing them in boxes. The mockups also provide for some nice displays for our travelling road shows where we set up booths with information on our project.

A good example of the usefulness of the mockup is in helping with storing the copper grounding strips that extend all over the interior surfaces. These strips of copper are less than 1mm in thickness and maybe 7 or 8mm wide and are very long and delicate. They were fastened with copper nails to the interior of the fuselage and wings and, when removed, can be easily damaged. Transferring these strips straight from the aircraft to the mockup clearly minimizes the risk of damage to these items and avoids the complex storage needs that would be required in the absence of such a mockup. Everything inside the fuselage is being pulled out so that the paint can be stripped down, damage repaired and then systems put back in once they are cleaned and restored off the aircraft.
 
Thanks Andy, perfectly clear (and sensible) now. Quick question - visible in part of the cockpit and nose, particularly on starboard side of 'bomber' versions, are a number of small discs.Do you know what these are?
 
Those are attachment points Terry. Each disc is glued to the interior surface of the fuselage and comes with an embedded metal socket with a thread in it. If you want to attach a junction box or wire harness, anything really, to the fuselage wall, it's done by screwing the items to these strategically placed attachment points. This avoids drilling fasteners into the wooden structure and causing a potential weak point.
 
Some more update shots for you.

Here are a couple of the the other mockups to show you. This first one is bulkhead 2 which is at the front of the bomb bay.

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I'm not sure which bulkhead this second one is, though it is labeled #4. Bulkhead 4 is a bit of an illusive animal, and is labeled differently on drawings and manuals in our possession. The dark line going across the bulkhead is one of the copper grounding strips. In the foreground is the pneumatic and hydraulic panel that mounts on the starboard side of the fuselage interior at about the wing trailing edge location. In the background can be seen the upper surface of the wing.

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We decided to paint the cockpit mockup as it will look better for displaying. I took a sample of a cockpit part to the local hardware store and had them scan the sample and match the paint exactly. After painting, the various controls were reinstalled.

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The above pic was taken last Saturday. The large unit is a the elevator bell crank and trim wheel and is an awkward affair to install. After mounting it, I had to remove it again today to hasten a pillow block bracket to the cockpit wall. The below pics are from today, starting with the reinstalled elevator control. The guard that's against the wall hides the bell crank. In the foreground is the mount for the control column.

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The next pics show the control column installation which we managed to get done before calling it a day. The rod attaching the control column to the elevator actuator is in a box somewhere so did not get installed.

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That's it for this session guys. Hope you enjoy.
 

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